No, we should not give it away. We should give it back.
Sent from my iPhone
On 11 sep 2009, at 19.02, "Jacobs, Jane W" <Jane.W.Jacobs_at_QUEENSLIBRARY.ORG
> wrote:
> It seems to me that the perversity of human psychology might be at
> work.
> People seem to agree on the some points:
>
>
>
> Data should be valuable:
>
> 1) A lot of work, and therefore expense went into creating all that
> data.
>
> 2) Actual experience (examples cited earlier) shows that much of it IS
> more accurate than what Google mash-ups are delivering with their
> current algorithms.
>
> 3) On the other hand library systems as they currently stand, lack
> good
> algorithms for effective user-friendly mash-ups.
>
> 4) We (Libraries and Librarians) are pretty strapped for cash, making
> getting programmers to make better mash-ups is tough, even assuming
> you
> have the vision to see what they might be.
>
> 5) Our circulation functions have us pretty well locked into Library
> systems that aren't spending much on better mash-ups.
>
> 6) Hence, it would be nice if Google, et. al. WOULD use our data and
> develop cool mash-ups that we could piggy-back off of to the mutual
> benefit of both ourselves AND Google.
>
>
>
> But the idea that Google (or anyone else) isn't using MARC records
> because OCLC or any other library is not facilitating a wholesale data
> dump seems highly unlikely to me. In the case of Google, if they
> really want OCLC data, signing an agreement, or even paying a few
> pennies or $s per record, would hardly stop them (It would probably
> still be cheaper than paying their programmers to develop algorithms
> to
> extract it from OCR scans.) and, anyway they could almost certainly
> grab
> it first and ask questions later. The problem is more likely that
> an
> organization like OCLC (which seems monolithic to us) is but a mere
> speck in the Google Universe.
>
>
>
> As for the rest of the non-bibliographic world, perhaps the data is
> perceived as lacking in value BECAUSE it is largely free!
>
> Before dismissing this as crazy talk, consider an interesting example
> with prescription drugs which I read about in a recent issue of "The
> Wellness Letter". For all that people complain about the price of
> drugs
> and how they can be produced for much less than their sale price, it
> turns out that, in a blind test, there is a strong "placebo effect"
> for
> expensive drugs. In the example: treat two sets of people with the
> same
> illness with the same amount of the same drug. Tell group 1 that the
> drug costs X; tell group 2 that the drug costs 5X. Lo and behold,
> Group
> 2 reports that their treatment is far more effective!
>
>
>
> I'm not much of a techie, and even I know you can grab a whole lotta
> data for free with BookWhere of Surpass. For some, perhaps the lack
> of
> easy data dumps, is more in the line of an excuse, handy once they
> found
> that creating better algorithms to access to bibliographic data was
> just
> a little harder than it looks, especially once the database gets
> large.
> Elsewhere, I really think that it may be the availability NOT the
> inaccessibility of MARC records that make some people ignore them or
> question their value!
>
>
>
> JJ
>
>
>
> **Views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent those of
> the Queens Library.**
>
>
>
> Jane Jacobs
>
> Asst. Coord., Catalog Division
>
> Queens Borough Public Library
>
> 89-11 Merrick Blvd.
>
> Jamaica, NY 11432
>
> tel.: (718) 990-0804
>
> e-mail: Jane.W.Jacobs_at_queenslibrary.org
>
> FAX. (718) 990-8566
>
>
>
>
>
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Received on Sat Sep 12 2009 - 06:33:13 EDT